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Arlene Foster has ruled out flying to London today for Brexit talks with Theresa May as insiders warned that the Democratic Unionist Party was “far away” from agreeing a deal with the Government on the Irish border.

Instead Nigel Dodds, the DUP's Westminster leader, will meet with the Government’s chief whip Julian Smith today in Westminster to try secure a deal on the terms of Britain leaving the European Union

The news throws into question the Prime Minister’s plans to fly back to Brussels tomorrow to try to secure agreement on the Irish border, EU citizens rights and a Brexit bill to kickstart trade talks.

There had been suggestions yesterday that Mrs Foster, the DUP leader, will fly to London to meet Mrs May today.

However a source told The Telegraph that the DUP did not "think it would be productive for Arlene to be there today" because there was so much more work to be done.

The source said: “Arlene will come in when they are close to agreeing something. There is such a level of work to be done at the moment – it is not at a stage where Arlene would be involved as leader.”

The source said the UK could still be in a “no deal” territory which would see the UK leave the EU in March 2019 without any trade deal with the EU.

The Telegraph has learned that Mrs Foster and her senior DUP colleagues were not shown the text of the 15 page draft agreement with the EU.

One source said: “The DUP had not seen any text. They had discussions with the Government when they indicated where the direction of travel, and where discussions were headed.”

Instead, Mrs May flew to Brussels, and then attempted to bounce the DUP by phone to agree the deal once it had leaked during her lunch with Jean Claude Juncker, the EU President.

One source said: “The DUP are not the sort of people you can bounce into an agreement they don’t like. If that means they walk away from the table, they walk away from the table.”

One of the problems is that the draft of the 15 page deal appears as though it was “drafted by Brussels, or worse still drafted by Dublin”, said a source familiar with the DUP’s thinking.

Number 10 said this morning that Mrs May hoped to speak with Mrs Foster later today but no face to face meeting was planned.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said Mrs May and David Davis, the Exiting the EU, briefed the Cabinet on the Brexit talks.

He said: "The PM said intensive work is taking place in recent weeks and the UK and European Commission are very close to getting agreement - there are a small number of issues outstanding.

"The PM said she expects to reconvene talks with the Commission later this week."

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